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Cathedral Eucharist sermon preached by The Venerable Howard Leigh, Precentor
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 22nd August 2010
Readings: Jeremiah71: 4-10; Hebrews 12: 18-29; Luke 13: 10-17

What does it mean to rest? What does it mean to take a break? What is Sabbath? Last month at the Diocesan Ministry conference over two days we reflected on keeping Sabbath time – how we could incorporate this biblical injunction into our own lives and enable others to do the same.
Today’s gospel both acclaims the Sabbath, yet challenges us not to use it as an excuse to be selfish and depart from the love of neighbour.
In the time of Jesus and indeed in Victorian days and still in some communities of faith ‘Sabbath’ is seen as an observance of rules rather than a renewing life-giving encounter with the grace of God.
A code of what was prohibited on the Sabbath had continued to grow and develop to include - lighting a fire, clapping your hands, jumping, and visiting the sick. By knowing this we can capture something of the tension in the scripture. Jesus heals on the day of rest.
The narrative style of the passage invites us into the room where Jesus teaches. We see the woman bent over. We bear witness to a "deformed person" who has relied upon the church for her existence the past eighteen years. This narrative and descriptive style is a helpful tool as by it we are invited to see this woman being approached by Jesus for healing and we are later invited to consider those among us who we ignore.
The encounter reminds me that, although order is important to liturgy, we need to allow for the probability that Jesus will move us in a different direction in order to change lives.
We are challenged to not only see ourselves as the woman in need of healing but as the synagogue leader. How safe is worship supposed to be? Do we really think that Jesus, the Christ, needs our protection? The challenge for the church is to be in relationship with people like the woman: "She was what the neighbourhood drunk, the wife beater, and the child abuser are to us—they enable us to feel better than they, but we don’t do much to change their lives."
I have to admit I continue to struggle with the notion of availability 24/7. I know that for my own health and well-being, and if I’m going to be any use to anyone, I need to keep a quality Sabbath. I have to regularly switch off, pause and take stock and disengage. Friday is the day for me – I avoid email and the cell phone, and usually go out of town or stay indoors. I am well aware this is frustrating for some…but things will wait or there is someone else. Without doubt, being faithful to keeping one day without diary and electronic media helps one to be much more responsive on the other six. I know that it is when I am tired from the energy expended of engaging with others and have ignored my self care that I find myself avoiding situations and encounters with others. If I had been less stressed by having observed quality Sabbath time this would be less likely to happen.
This is not particular to me for I am sure most of us can identify with a situation especially when tired or unwell when we simply don’t have the resources to engage. Also we need to acknowledge the reality of our human condition. Sometimes, we just do not want to see the person standing next to us. We do not want to interact with someone who may bug us, or annoy us, or inconvenience us.
We are all good at looking away. In church we go to great lengths to avoid strangers because we believe we are here for our own spiritual sustenance. We pass by the homeless because it is the responsibility of an agency or someone else. Why look away? Looking requires presence which requires energy which opens up the possibility that we need the person next to us for life, or, in other words, we have to bring ourselves out, and we have to let the other in. And sometimes life is a lot easier without being in community.
Luke’s gospel is rich with accounts of these chance encounters with Jesus, which we can easily identify with in our daily lives and faith journey - the sorts of holy moments that happen on the way to or in the midst of something else. These stories which are particular to Sundays in Ordinary Time reach beyond the pages of the text and cause us to pause in our well-worn tracks; they bring us up short, confronting us with a God whose movement in our world—and whose claim on our lives—is not reserved for ecclesiastically prescribed times, places, and occasions. We find ourselves challenged yet again by the reality of God-at-work in the stuff of our daily round. Inevitably, these encounters are moments of radically re-orienting grace, challenging us to pay attention—to go deeper, open wider, stand up straighter—in the recognition that all of life is life lived before God.
In the midst of a sacred moment of prescribed worship with set parameters and expectations, Jesus is able to make a grace filled response, knowing that he will be criticized for his actions.

All people are called to fullness of stature, bent-over women and synagogue leaders alike. While the story of this unnamed woman has inspired preachers to proclaim wholeness and freedom on behalf of all persons whose spirits have been bent and whose humanity has been diminished by ignorance and prejudice—women, racial minorities, same-sex loving persons, those who are economically disadvantaged—there is another bent-over character in the narrative as well. The more pointed and pungent lesson for the ears of our churches may well be embodied in the person of the synagogue leader in this story, the faithful church leader whose well-ordered worship service and whose lifelong understanding of faithfulness has been disrupted by this visiting rabbi who leaves aside his own lecture to spend his attentions on a single member of the flock.
We have been in this synagogue leader’s pulpit, as well. We know the clutch of rising panic, the realization that we are losing control as we watch the unravelling of the event, or the family, or the community or the set of meanings that we have so carefully built up over so long. Which of us hasn’t found ourselves repeating a precious truth as if our insistence could make it right? We align ourselves with our favourite truths and practices, and the more closely we do so, the more they can compromise our perspectives and limit the fullness of our vision. Within our own congregations—indeed, within each one of us—there are both bent-over women and synagogue leaders, and the good news for each is the same.
If we are able to treat our Sabbaths as grace – filled times, of personal space, encounter with God, and opportunities to be open to the present moment, we may find that in our everyday lives the creativity of our God will continue to move through us and we will be part of shaping a creation-in-progress. We are likely to discover that we are responding more appropriately to situations and are able to transcend both our human limitations and the restrictions of our human institutions.
I guess the creative tension of observing Sabbath time faithfully and the commitment I have to respond to the needs of others will always be for me ongoing but never-the-less manageable through the grace of God.